The saying, "What we don't know can't hurt us," must have been said by a man who had a lot to hide. There is a new version of this saying, embodied in how our society produces mountains of wasted paper as forests disappear and people get sick. What we don't know, or care to know, does not seem to matter until we lose our jobs to people who relish in greed.
We drive and walk up and down the alleys of civilization wondering what ever happened to the trickle-down theory. That potion of words that hypnotized Ronald Reagan into thinking he was helping poor people by cutting back social programs.
Enron and Afghanistan are issues I hope we look more deeply into and learn from; unless you are like Bush with the magical ability to just look someone in the eyes to know they are all right. Most of us have to look much deeper than just the eyes, and focus on the heart of what we do not know and are not being told.
We do not know why Dick Cheney refuses to answer routine congressional questioning into whom participated in his private meetings that shaped our energy plan. This congressional inquiry has escalated into an unprecedented lawsuit, which will force Cheney and others to reveal those involved in developing our national energy plan.
We do know that Bush recently refused to follow the Presidential Records Act, a mandate that all but the most highly sensitive documents are to be made public 12 years after a president leaves office. What is in those Reagan papers that have collected 12 years of dust, but are probably kept so clean you could eat off them that Bush does not want us to see?
Why would Cheney deny the public's right, our right, to know whom he negotiated with on a topic that seriously affects us all? What we also do not know is where the heck is Dick Cheney? We hear so little from Cheney that I almost forgot there was a vice president. Isn't the vice-president there to help divvy up the arduous task of leading this country, or at least appearing on TV now and then?
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Even when Attorney General John Ashcroft's tried tugging or tightening the loose strings, we have learned that Cheney's energy policy committee met with the chief executive officer of Enron, Kenneth Lay, six times last year to discuss the energy policy.
Cheney, however, neglected to meet with environmental, consumer advocate, and other non-corporate groups that are equally invested in our energy policy. That is, invested not in terms of money, but of genuine concern.
And what do we know, or have not been told, about who Hamid Karzai is that makes his story so interesting? Well, it turns out that before becoming interim leader of Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai used to work for the huge U.S. oil company, Unocal. Unocal and several Russian oil companies have, after shaking hands and settling differences of course, dusted off their files around the construction of an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the west through Afghanistan.
In a tragic drama that beats a Greek play any day, this pipeline is the main untold reason why Russia invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s, and why we gave Osama bin Laden and the mujahadeen weapons to fight off the "commies." I guess Afghanistan people do not have much of a say when it comes to the construction of a pipeline that will march across their country and is estimated to slurry 3 million barrels of oil per day by 2010?
Sometimes you wonder what our definitions of peace and democracy are. When we threaten three countries by calling them evil, and still say we are for peace. Are we referring to the peacefulness held in the silent clouds of dust kicked up by B-52 bombs? Or is the peace process an active and all-inclusive dialogue addressing the rights and wrongs of where society is going? Doesn't democracy mean we all participate in this dialogue without being weighted down with the fear of bombs or its aftermath of silence, and that we are being told the truth?
by Maceo Carrillo Martinet
Daily Lobo Columnist
Questions or comments can be sent to Maceo Carrillo Martinet at conuco8@unm.edu.
